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More "Jester" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mary who in her day wrought so much woe for unhappy England, and the dashing Princess Elizabeth who lived to rule so well, seem to live again. A friend of Mr. Clemens' once told me that he said he wrote that book so that when his little daughters grew up they might know that their tired old jester of a father could be ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... head-gear, even more boisterously than usual. He bore it at first with an inviting patience; but upon one of the students proceeding to an unpardonable freedom, plucked out his knife and suddenly plunged it in the belly of the jester. This gentleman, I am pleased to say, passed months upon a bed of sickness, before he was in a position to resume his studies. The second incident was that which had earned Pinkerton his reputation. In a crowded studio, while some very ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... were just opposite the Hall, but he could not go backward and forward without assistance. It was painful in the extreme to see the man who was undergoing tortures behind the curtain step lightly before the audience amid a burst of merriment, and for more than an hour sustain the part of jester, tossing his cap and jingling his bells, a painted death's head, for he had to rouge his face to ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... to dance foul dances. I have grinned and whistled through evil days and ways. My wit was gray with iniquities when Hildebrand, the King's minion, saw me one day at a fair in Naples and picked me out for jester to Prince Robert." ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... but humility and despair. Frank Harris once said of Oscar Wilde: "If England insists on treating her criminals like this, she doesn't deserve to have any." Similarly, if the public insists on bringing its woes to its colyumists, it doesn't deserve to have any colyumists. Then the battered jester turns again to his machine and ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... Interlude of Godly Queen Esther, printed in 1561, we have a Miracle-Play going still further out of itself. One of the characters is named Hardy-dardy, who, with some qualities of the Vice, foreshadows the Jester, or professional Fool, of the later Drama; wearing motley, and feigning weakness or disorder of intellect, to the end that his wit may run more at large, and strike with the better effect. Hardy-dardy offers ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... interpretation was probably the result of a confusion with the old legend of the fight between Horus and Set, the rulers of the two kingdoms of Egypt. The possibility also suggests itself that a pun made by some priestly jester may have been the real factor that led to this mingling of two originally separate stories. In the "Destruction of Mankind" the story runs, according to Budge,[195] that Re, referring to his enemies, said: ma-ten set uar er set, "Behold ye ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... and saw a man close beside him in what he knew at once to be the garb of a jester. A tall scarlet velvet cap, with three peaks, bound with gold braid, and each surmounted with a little gilded bell, crowned his head, a small crimson ridge to indicate the cock's comb running along the front. His jerkin and hose were of motley, the left arm and right leg ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cries of "'Polyte! 'Polyte!" were heard, and a nimble young man with a jester-like face hopped around the corner of the church, trundling a barrel. Behind 'Polyte came two rotund little men perspiring freely, and laden down with various articles,—a bird-cage with two yellow birds, a hat-trunk, an inlaid card box, a roll of scarlet ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in the street, what channel, what shambles, what dunghill, what vault, could have hurt me so much as these homebred vapours? What fugitive, what almsman of any foreign state, can do so much harm as a detractor, a libeller, a scornful jester at home? For as they that write of poisons, and of creatures naturally disposed to the ruin of man, do as well mention the flea as the viper[170], because the flea, though he kill none, he does all the harm he can; so even these libellous and licentious jesters utter the venom they have, though ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... brother to Calverley, and in modern times there has been nothing so good of its sort as 'Tillers of the Sand.'... Mr. Seaman proves himself so brilliant a jester that it needs must be he takes the jester's privilege of offending no ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... following the hero. Tragedy and comedy, instead of being separated, were represented as meeting at every crossroad or entering the church door side by side. So the most solemn Miracles were scandalized by humorous Interludes, and into the most tragic of Shakespeare's scenes entered the fool and the jester. A Greek playwright might object to brutalizing scenes before a cultured audience, but the crowds who came to an Elizabethan play were of a temper to enjoy a Mohawk scalp dance. They were accustomed to violent scenes and sensations; ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... Indeed, it is only there that he finds them at all. A thing that is labelled 'comic' chills his sense of humour instantly—perceptibly lengthens his face. A joke that has not a serious background, or some serious connexion, means nothing to him. Nothing to him, the crude jape of the professional jester. Nothing to him, the jangle of the bells in the wagged cap, the thud of the swung bladder. Nothing, the joke that hits him violently in the eye, or pricks him with a sharp point. The jokes that he loves are those quiet jokes which have no apparent point—the ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... and thought Barton a miserable jester. He caught at the epithet "Noble," and asked if any one, lawfully entitled to it, would be so degenerate as ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... Arabian pate and drink a glass of liqueur; he tried, but could swallow nothing. Sorrow had closed his throat; he was sunk in reminiscences. He felt with perfect tangibleness that breath of cold air which was blowing around him. In this manner did Time blow on the man—Time, that merciless jester, who had always circled about playing various pranks on him; but Kranitski had never looked into the face of that jester, with attention. Occasionally, sorrow and grief had come to him in company with the trickster, but they were transient, ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... an idiot who lived long in Lauder, and seems to have had a great resemblance to the jester of old times. He was a staunch supporter of the Established Church. One day some one gave him a bad shilling. On Sunday he went to the Seceders' meeting-house, and when the ladle was taken round he put in his bad ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... jester succeeds in his mission of laugh-producing. But his methods are not possessed in the main of dramatic respectability. And it must be apparent that our analysis and citations have covered the bulk of ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... wish to succeed as a jester, you'll need To consider each person's auricular: What is all right for B would quite scandalise C (For C is so very particular); And D may be dull, and E's very thick skull Is as empty of brains as a ladle; While F is F sharp, and will cry ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... of a shark in the harbour let loose the old jester again. "A friend of mine," said he, "pilot of a vessel almost as fast a sailer as my own, which is acknowledged to be the best in these seas, was bound to Mocha with camels on board. When off the high table-land betwixt the Bay of Tajura and the Red Sea, one of the beasts ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... days of the John Bull it was the fashion to lay every foundling witticism at the door of Sam Rogers; and thus the refined poet and man of letters became known as a sorry jester. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... table of Mac Strann made a speech to the effect that Elkhead had everything it needed except laughter, that Mac Strann had come to their assistance in that respect, and that if he, the old man, had the power, he would pension such an efficient jester and keep him permanently in the town. To all of this Mac Strann paid not the slightest heed, but with his fleshy brow puckered considered the infinite distance. Even the drink which Pale Annie, grateful for the averted riot, placed on the table before him, Mac Strann allowed ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... biscuit, the two Englishmen were in the habit of going off to hunt for the daily supply of fresh meat accompanied by Chimbolo as their guide and game-carrier, Antonio as their interpreter, and Mokompa as their poet and jester. They did not indeed, appoint Mokompa to that post of honour, but the little worthy took it upon himself, for the express purpose of noting the deeds of the white men, in order to throw his black comrades into convulsions over supper by a poetic ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... beyond an exposition of his distresses. He was often a talkative, facetious fellow, prompt at repartee, and not withheld from exercising his powers that way by any respect of persons, his patched cloak giving him the privilege of the ancient jester. To be a gude crack, that is, to possess talents for conversation, was essential to the trade of a 'puir body' of the more esteemed class; and Burns, who delighted in the amusement their discourse afforded, seems to have looked forward with gloomy firmness to the possibility of himself becoming ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... and quoth the Droll, "'Tis well, O King of the Age." Hereupon the Sultan sent to summon the Wazir and bade him betroth the man to a woman of righteous conduct and come of decent folk. Now the Minister had with him an old nurse, and he commanded her to find a match for the Sultan's Jester; whereupon she rose and went out from him and engaged for the man a beautiful woman. And presently the marriage-tie was tied between these twain and he went in unto the bride and she tarried with him a while of time even half a year or may be seven ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... of a marriage of convenience.... The dialogue is good: that of "Dicky Browne," a kind of licensed jester, being really bright and lively. The heroine is well drawn, and so is a terrible aunt of hers, whose encounters with the Marquis (himself a clever ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... of the tobacco he had brought with him from town; ordinarily, that would have been enough to make a clerk go about banging doors and expressing himself emphatically upon many points; but no, Eleseus only grew the steadier for it firmer and more upright; a man indeed. Even Sivert, the jester, could not put him out of countenance. Today the pair of them were lying out on boulders in the river to drink, and Sivert imprudently offered to get some extra fine moss and dry it for tobacco—"unless you'd rather smoke it ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... back, like a silken standard borne against the breeze. He seeks for opportunities for seeing her. With the thought about her haunting him by day and night, he finds no rest, and no pleasure even in his favourite recreation—sporting. Mathavya, the jester, friend and companion of the king, however, breaks the dull monotony of his anxious time. The opportunity which the king seeks offers itself. The hermits send an embassy to the king asking him to come over to the hermitage ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... run mad. The conditions may be summed up in brief; we may extinguish emotion, and so live to old age, or we may choose to die young as martyrs to contending passions. And yet this decree is at variance with the temperaments with which we were endowed by the bitter jester who modeled all creatures." ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... sense upon him that elsewhere it is Eugene and not he who is the jester, and that in these circles where Eugene persists in being speechless, he, Mortimer, is but the double of the friend on whom he has ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the sight now beheld at Leipzig, where there are also pious people who would venture body and soul for God's Word and the Scriptures, but where a blasphemer can thus openly speak and write, who esteems and treats God's holy words no better than if they were the fabled pratings of some fool or jester at the carnival. Because my Lord Christ and His holy Word, even He who gave His own blood as the purchase-price, is held to be but mockery and fools' wit, I must likewise drop all seriousness, and see whether I, too, have learned how ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... worthiness of the subject. Those kind of objections, as they are full of a very idle uneasiness (since there is nothing of so sacred a majesty, but that an itching tongue may rub itself upon it), so deserve they no other answer, but, instead of laughing at the jest, to laugh at the jester. We know a playing wit can praise the discretion of an ass, the comfortableness of being in debt, and the jolly commodities of being sick of the plague; so, of the contrary side, if we ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... Entrance to Bamboozlem, and was published by Humphrey shortly afterwards. The queen is represented at the head of a procession, all the members of which (herself included) are mounted on braying "jackasses." A figure, intended no doubt for Alderman Wood, habited in a fool's cap and jester's dress, holds her by the hand; the lady who follows him, playing on the fiddle and wearing a Scotch bonnet, is meant for Lady Ann Hamilton (she is named "Lady Ann Bagpipe" in the sketch); Bergami (immediately behind) carries a banner inscribed "Innocence"; and next him, his fat ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... constantly, and never harbored an impure thought. His pictures are simply so many pieces of jewellery, the colors of the draperies being perfectly pure, as various as those of a painted window, chastened only by paleness, and relieved upon a gold ground. Salvator was a dissipated jester and satirist, a man who spent his life in masquing and revelry. But his pictures are full of horror, and their color is for the most part gloomy grey. Truly it would seem as if art had so much of eternity in it, that it must take its dye from ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... success. So the person making a speech of presentation must mingle the two feelings as he and the audience experience them. Taking his cue from the tone of the occasion he must fit his remarks to that mood. He may be as bright and sparkling and as amusing as a refined court jester. He may be as impressive and serious as a judge. The treatment must be determined by ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... [93] [Conan the Jester, a character in the Irish ballads, was "a kind of Thersites, but brave and daring even to rashness. He had made a vow that he would never take a blow without returning it; and having ... descended to the infernal regions, he received a cuff from the arch-fiend, which he instantly ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... that even in the Court of Venice to which he was accredited, in order to borrow money from the merchants of that city, he was too profligate to remain. He came back with Charles II., and was Master of the Revels, or King's Jester, as the court considered him, though without any regular appointment, during his life: the butt, at once, and the satirist ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... mild, almost unconscious, as if he could depict for us what of the humorous came under his observation without himself seeing the fun in it. Where he sets forth with intent to be humorous he sometimes attains almost to the tragic; there are few things so sad as a joke that misses fire or a jester ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... oil the razor best is whet, So wit is by politeness sharpest set: Their want of edge from their offence is seen; Both pain us least when exquisitely keen. The fame men give is for the joy they find; Dull is the jester, when the joke's unkind. Since Marcus, doubtless, thinks himself a wit, To pay my compliment, what place so fit? His most facetious(11)letters came to hand, Which my first satire sweetly reprimand: If that a just offence to Marcus gave, Say, Marcus, which art ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... is old and richly carved; and the painting, bordered by its beautiful dull gold, shines with the lustre of an emerald. In his happy moods Dosso set colour upon canvas, as no other painter out of Venice ever did; and here he is at his happiest. The picture is the portrait of a jester, dressed in courtly clothes and with a feathered cap upon his head. He holds a lamb in his arms, and carries the legend, Sic Genius. Behind him is a landscape of exquisite brilliancy and depth. His face is young and handsome. Dosso has made it one most wonderful laugh. Even so perhaps ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... him at times. He spoke of Henry's death and little Langdon's, and charged himself with both. He declared that for years he had filled Mrs. Clemens's life with privations, that the sorrow of Susy's death had hastened her own end. How darkly he painted it! One saw the jester, who for forty years had been making the world laugh, performing always before a background ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... that we all are one; yes, even the slayer and the slain. Therefore, if my friend—did you call him Death?—was there, I was there, if you were there I was there and it was my hand that drew yonder great black bow of yours and my eye that guided the straight shaft which laid the foulmouthed jester low. Why, did you not say as much yourself when your master here bade farewell to his father in the ship at Calais? What were the words? Oh, I remember them. You wondered how One I may not name," and he bowed his solemn head, "came to make that black bow and yours and you 'the death ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... it was accomplished, not forgetting to carry along with him the three personages who chiefly ministered to his amusement, and whom he sent on before him in a separate waggon, to wit, his favourite greyhound, his gipsy jester, and his parasitical poet, all three of whom made a nice little ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... Grenville, and Lord Howick, it is because they love their country; if I abhor . . . it is because I know there is but one man among them who is not laughing at the enormous folly and credulity of the country, and that he is an ignorant and mischievous bigot. As for the light and frivolous jester, of whom it is your misfortune to think so highly, learn, my dear Abraham, that this political Killigrew, just before the breaking-up of the last administration, was in actual treaty with them for a place; and if they had survived twenty-four hours longer, he ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... pressing by Miss Royce) twanged her guitar and sang little songs—French and English, funny and sentimental—he became, as he had so often become in other scenes, the Rigoletto of the company; and Riffrath was a kingdom in which he might be court jester in ordinary if he chose, whenever he elected to honor it with his gracious and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... in what sense laughter is a "correction." Whether one considers the jests uttered, the feelings of the jester, or of him at whom one jests, laughter appears from the point of view of morality as a correction most often undeserved, unjust—or at least disproportionate ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... languid approval, as if he were some paid jester, and went into the breakfast-room. There were others there beside Lady Clansford—most of them the young people—it is, alas! only the young who can sleep through the bright hours of a summer's morn—and a discussion on the ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... way like old ladies at a concert with their knitting. Hazel had fastened two foxgloves round her head in a wreath, and as she went their deep and darkly spotted bells shook above her, and she walked, like a jester in a grieving ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... moreover was the most disinterested man I ever saw; while Tete Rouge, though equally good-natured in his way, cared for nobody but himself. Yet we would not have lost him on any account; he admirably served the purpose of a jester in a feudal castle; our camp would have been lifeless without him. For the past week he had fattened in a most amazing manner; and indeed this was not at all surprising, since his appetite was most inordinate. He was eating from morning till night; half the time he would be at work ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a shrill and sudden cry, And, looking up, I saw the antic Puck Grappling with Time, who clutch'd him like a fly, Victim of his own sport,—the jester's luck! He, whilst his fellows grieved, poor wight, had stuck His freakish gauds upon the Ancient's brow, And now his ear, and now his beard, would pluck; Whereas the angry churl had snatched him now, Crying, "Thou ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... following SHUMAKIM, a hump-backed jester, in blue, green and red, a wreath of poppies around his neck and a flagon in his hand. He walks unsteadily, and stutters in ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... other gloss there was), characterised the garments of the men. The toilettes of the women were modest; that amount of praise (and it is a good deal) they deserved. A young lady, Miss Maskelyne, an amber-hued beauty, who practically lived as a female jester at the houses of the great, shone resplendent, indeed, but magnificence of apparel ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... think, at any rate, they will prove that the expression of humor does not always depend upon exaggeration, and may exist in a work which is, one may say, almost copied from nature. Fig. 63 is an example to this effect. The little jester just emerging from a flower, one of the side-pieces to a Miserere seat carving, is undoubtedly a true portrait, carved without the slightest attempt at exaggeration. The quiet humor which it evinces required only sympathy to perceive and skill to portray on the part of its carver. He ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... their admirals: the loss of the English was inconsiderable, compared to the greatness and importance of the victory.[*] None of Philip's courtiers, it is said, dared to inform him of the event; till his fool or jester gave him a hint, by which he discovered the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... to her, uttered only a single word of approval, which, on subsequently consulting a book of interpretations, this person found to indicate: "A person of weak intellect; one without an adequate sense of the proportion and fitness of things; a buffoon; a jester; a compound of gooseberries scalded and crushed with cream"; but although each of these definitions may in a way be regarded as applicable, he is still unable to decide which was the ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... Friedrich perceived. Thus had La Mettrie found a Goshen;—and stood in considerable favor, at Court and in Berlin Society in the years now current. According to Nicolai, Friedrich never esteemed La Mettrie, which is easy to believe, but found him a jester and ingenious madcap, out of whom a great deal of merriment could be had, over wine or the like. To judge by Nicolai's authentic specimen, their Colloquies ran sometimes pretty deep into the cynical, under ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... the holy intimacies of the domestic hearth. Once returned from the abysms of the utter North to that little house upon the outskirts of Meudon, it was not the philosopher, the daring observer, the man of iron energy that imposed himself on his family, but a fat and even plaintive jester, a farceur incarnate and kindly, the co-equal of his children, and, it must be written, not seldom the comic despair of Madame Lavalle, who, as she writes five years after the marriage, to her venerable mother, found "in this unequalled ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... incident, varied and sufficiently complex in color, passion and character to furnish material for an exciting spectacular representation. The tragic element is strong, but supported and shaded by the company of roysterers, a jester, whose foolery is a compound of bluff of that period and bluff of modern politics and athletics. The jester, the black company and the penitents, together with the roysterers, form now the foreground, now the background, of action, which in itself is never without ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... who appeared to be watching all the evening for opportunities of letting off his jokes, which were always applauded longest and loudest by himself. My comical neighbour's name, I afterwards learned, was Bayles; he was the licensed jester of the club; he had been a punster from his youth; and it was his chief boast that he had joked himself into the best society and out of the largest fortune of any individual ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 4, 1841 • Various
... supple and proud, libertine and gourmand, grasping from the pressure of debt, discreet as a tomb out of which nought issues to contradict the epitaph intended for the passer's eye, bold and fearless when soliciting, good-natured and witty in all acceptations of the word, a timely jester, full of tact, knowing how to compromise others by a glance or a nudge, shrinking from no mudhole, but gracefully leaping it, intrepid Voltairean, yet punctual at mass if a fashionable company could be met in Saint Thomas ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... writings for thy mind, O Montezuma, I come hither, I come raining them down, a very jester, a painted butterfly; stringing together pretty objects, I seem to be as one cementing together precious stones, as I chant my song on my emerald flute, as I blow on my golden flute, ya ho, ay ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... hostess, who knew her knight for a merry jester, was yet half inclined to believe his account of the forest dwellers, and she looked with added interest upon the blushing Dolly. Master Morgan ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... The person who has imagination can cause the facts of the multiplication table to scintillate and glow. The person who lacks imagination is unable to invest with interest and charm even the mountain, the river, the landscape, or the poem. The gossip, the scandal-monger, or the coarse jester proves his lack of imagination and his consequent inability to hold his own in real conversation. We hope, of course, that some of our pupils may become inventors, but this will be impossible unless they possess imagination. A sociologist states the case in this fashion: "Wealth, the transient, ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... of the Mountain and the Squirrel, the steep height should quiver and heave and then give forth its personality in the figure of a vague smoky giant, capable of human argument, but with oak-roots in his hair, and Bun, perhaps, become a jester in squirrel's dress. ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... contrition. I forgave him, so let me cease to recall the life I passed with him. By the sweat of my brow I was compelled to serve him; for seven long years I was his slave. I sold myself for the sake of knowledge, I was consoled by progress. I was the servant, companion, jester, and slave of my tyrant, but I was also the disciple, the priest of learning. In my own room my chains fell off. In the lonely night-watches I communed with the great, the immortal spirits of Horace, ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... "The jester took her away, I think," answered Inez. "I found them together on the terrace. She was trying to come back to you, but he prevented her. They ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... and Epicurus bore the palm, in virtue of their kindliness, sociability, and good-fellowship. Aesop the Phrygian was there, and held the office of jester. Diogenes of Sinope was much changed; he had married Lais the courtesan, and often in his cups would oblige the company with a dance, or other mad pranks. The Stoics were not represented at all; they were supposed to be still climbing the steep hill of Virtue; and as ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... was chosen for his piety and learning, but many remembered him as the wheelwright's son, who had once worked at his father's trade. As the Archbishop passed in stately procession to the Cathedral, some jeered him, and one jester had chalked white cartwheels on all the walls on either side of the procession. When the Archbishop was enthroned in the Cathedral, he saw, hanging above his head, a shield which was to bear his arms. The Archbishop ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... us here have had, at Pompeii, looking at Sallust's house and the relics of an orgy, a dried wine-jar or two, a charred supper-table, the breast of a dancing girl pressed against the ashes, the laughing skull of a jester, a perfect stillness round about, as the cicerone twangs his moral, and the blue sky shines calmly over the ruin. The Congreve muse is dead, and her song choked in Time's ashes. We gaze at the skeleton, and wonder at the life which once revelled in its mad veins. We take ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... antics were holy things, Elder," retorted the reckless jester; but Standish ranging ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... King, and come to claim my own From an impostor, who usurps my throne!" And suddenly, at these audacious words, Up sprang the angry guests, and drew their swords; The Angel answered, with unruffled brow, "Nay, not the King, but the King's Jester, thou Henceforth shalt wear the bells and scalloped cape, And for thy counsellor shalt lead an ape; Thou shalt obey my servants when they call, And wait upon my henchmen ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... animals themselves, has ever come out of a zoo. The zoo scientist is the old woman of zoology, and his alleged wisdom is usually exhibited, not in the groves of actual learning, but in the yellow journals. He is to biology what the late Camille Flammarion was to astronomy, which is to say, its court jester and reductio ad absurdum. When he leaps into public notice with some new pearl of knowledge, it commonly turns out to be no more than the news that Marie Bashkirtseff, the Russian lady walrus, has had her teeth plugged with zinc and is expecting twins. Or that Pishposh, the man-eating ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... if the girl were a penknife or a marble that had rolled from Bates's pocket, and the latter, irritated by an inward fear, grew to hate the jester. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... palace Thoughts unnumbered throng; And there, most quiet and, as a child, most wise, High-throned you sit, and gracious. All day long Great Hopes gold-armoured, jester Fantasies, And pilgrim Dreams, and little beggar Sighs, Bow to your benediction, go their way. And the grave jewelled courtier Memories Worship and love and tend ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... critics of any new idea, that the eugenist, in his concern for the race, is blind to the natural interests and needs of the individual; that "we are all to be married to each other by the police," as an irresponsible jester has declared; that the sanctities of love are to be profaned or its imperatives defied. Even serious and responsible persons assume that there is here a necessary antagonism between the interests of the race and those of the individual,—that ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... broke out into a hearty laugh. When she had finished laughing, she said, "Ah! I see you are like all men—a hypocrite and a jester. Much truth is in your jesting words. I am the sun of your life! Without me life would be worth nothing! Indeed, without me, you would be sacrificed to a snake!" She seated herself, and said, "Be not afraid: swear ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... The Revels of Orsera is a little unsatisfying the elaboration of scenic description and mediaeval pageantry is conscientious in the extreme, and the laughter which followed the malicious pranks of Gangogo, the professional jester of the tourney, must, if I am to take the author's word for it, have made the glaciers ring. There is a great deal in the way of philosophy and psychology that is very baffling in this book, but of one thing I feel certain, and that is that the Elemental Spirits of the Heights, to whom frequent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... season. But, now, take the pelikin! if game is a fah' name fo' him—aw heh, as the case may be; which that bird—nine foot f'm tip to tip, the white ones—use' to be as common on this riveh as cuckle-burrs in a sheep's tail!" The jester laughed, or, more strictly, exhaled his mirth from the roof of a wide-spread mouth in a long hiss that would have been more like an angered alligator's if alligators used fine-cut tobacco. It was addressed to the commodore; for Hugh, his grandfather's conscious inferior in human charity, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... Sir Knight," says the heroine in the Romance, "I forgive you as a Christian." "That means," said Wamba, "that she does not forgive him at all." Mr. Kingsley's word of honour is about as valuable as in the jester's opinion was the Christian charity of Rowena. But here we are brought to a further specimen of Mr. Kingsley's method of disputation, and having duly exhibited it, I ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... priest, seated by the table, is imploring, in the most pitiful language, the generosity of the attendants. "He who puts a half-dollar in this plate," said the priest in one of the churches in Cadiz, "draws out a soul from purgatory." An Andalusian, as great an epigrammatist and jester as are generally the natives of that agreeable province, on one of these occasions took out from his purse his half-dollar, and put it on the plate, saying that his intention was to rescue the soul of his father. At the end of a moment or two he asked the priest if the soul of his father ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... Nicholas recognised the king's jester, Archie Armstrong, a merry little knave, with light blue eyes, long yellow hair hanging about his ears, and a sandy beard. There was a great deal of mother wit about Archie, and quite as much shrewdness as folly. He wore no distinctive ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... seats, and drew their swords. They would have killed the crazy man who insulted their king; but he raised his hand and stopped them, and with his eyes looking into Robert's eyes he said, "Not the king; you shall be the king's jester! You shall wear the cap and bells, and make laughter for my court. You shall be the servant of the servants, and your companion shall be ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... Jester and jolly fellow, he keeps on good terms with all political opinions, and is patriotic to the bottom of his soul. A capital mimic, he knows how to put on, turn and turn about, the smiles of persuasion, satisfaction, and good-nature, or drop them for the normal ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... hatred by bad principle, or contempt by Cowardice, yet involved in circumstances productive of imputation in both; a butt and a wit, a humourist and a man of humour, a touchstone and a laughing stock, a jester and a jest, has Sir John Falstaff, taken at that period of his life in which we see him, become the most perfect Comic character ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... powder, 'tis said, Like a soldier escheweth the taste of cold lead; No jester, or mime, hath more marvellous wit, For, wherever he lighteth, he maketh a hit! Caw! Caw! the Carrion Crow! Dig! Dig! in ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... presence of the enraged [v]thane. Gurth's heart swelled within him, for he felt this attempted slaughter of his faithful beast in a degree much deeper than the harsh treatment he had himself received. Having in vain raised his hand to his eyes, he said to Wamba, the jester, who, seeing his master's ill humor, had prudently retreated to the rear, "I pray thee, do me the kindness to wipe my eyes with the skirt of thy mantle; the dust offends me, and these bonds will not let me help myself one way ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... He must realize his aloofness from the rest of mankind, and in moments of such bitter self-knowledge I can picture many whom the world regards as too far gone to comprehend their calamity praying the prayer of the court-jester, "God be merciful to me a fool." I am a little tender towards such. I do not condemn them. They have reached the stage when they are the victims of human pity—a lamentable condition. But those dense persons inhabiting the thickly populated region bordering ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... sleeping-room and boudoir; that on the left is the ditto of Prime Minister Dominick and his Chief Secretary Prince Otto. The sort of hen-coop stuck on behind is to be the abode of the Court Physician, Dr John Marsh—whom, by the way, you'll have to knight—and with whom is to be billeted the Court Jester, Man-at-Arms, Man-of-all-work and general retainer, little Buxley. So, you see, it's all cut and dry, though of course it will take some little time to finish the palace in all its multitudinous details. Meanwhile ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... the prudence not to appear touched with the sarcasm of a jester, they subject themselves to his power, and the wise man will have his folly anatomised, that is dissected and laid open by the squandring glances or ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... costume. The king himself being attired with dignity, it took the world some centuries to discover that his own conduct and decrees were sufficiently ridiculous for the amusement not only of his court but of all mankind. The jester was commonly called a fool, but the poets and romancers have ever delighted to represent him as a singularly wise and witty person. In the circus of to-day the melancholy ghost of the court fool effects the dejection of humbler audiences with the same jests wherewith ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... trading, or offering us island curios at prices palpably absurd. There was no word of welcome; no show of civility; no hand extended save that of the chief and Mr. Regler. As we still continued to refuse the proffered articles, complaint ran high and rude; and one, the jester of the party, railed upon our meanness amid jeering laughter. Amongst other angry pleasantries—'Here is a mighty fine ship,' said he, 'to have no money on board!' I own I was inspired with sensible repugnance; even with alarm. The ship was manifestly in their ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... by demands for admission in the king's name, and seeing a band of masked men enter, he recalled Charles's threat at parting, that he would come and administer to him a whipping. The practical joke would not have been unlike many of the mad antics of the royal jester, and La Rochefoucauld, addressing himself to the person whom he supposed to be his Majesty in disguise, begged him to treat him with humanity. His deception was not long continued; for the maskers, after rifling ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... admittance as a horse-boy, was kicked out. There was tumult and excitement in the streets. Giovanni, retreating to a narrow alley to brush mud off his doublet, was aware that a man with keen observant eyes was regarding him from the doorway of a wine-shop. The man wore the cap and bells of a jester, and his fantastic costume was gorgeously colored and ornamented. He was drinking a cup of wine, and when that was finished he poured another for himself and began to sip it slowly. Catching Giovanni's eye, ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... of wood, and took it out of this singular kettle in some way unknown to his guests. He carefully gave each their portion to eat, but made so many odd movements that the Otter could not refrain from laughing, for he is the only one who is spoken of as a jester. The Manito looked at him with a terrible look, and then made a spring at him, and got on him to smother him, for that was his mode of killing animals. But the Otter, when he felt him on his neck, slipped his head back and made for the door, which he passed in safety; ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... is a prank of some carnival-mad jester, child," said she. "There is not a word of truth in it. ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... knowledge of composition, a familiarity with mediaeval costume, and a command over chiaroscuro, which astonished and delighted those who had been accustomed to regard him only as a funny fellow,—one of infinite whim, to be sure, but still a jester of jests, and nothing more. Unfortunately, or fortunately, as the case might be,—for the rumor ran that George intended to abandon caricaturing altogether, and to set up in earnest as an historical painter,—there came from beyond the sea, to assist in illustrating "Windsor Castle," a Frenchman ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... "Folly Party" may be adorned with a picture of a fools cap and bells or a Jester. ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... life of a royal jester beset with great dangers, and the king having once gotten it into his royal head that I was a wizard, it was not long before I again fell into trouble, from which my wit did not a second time in a like way save me. I was ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... falconer, page, and jester, enters the church door. Death shows him that his sands ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... had impressed her: The stranger had mentioned these notables with no especial emphasis on the names; but instead, quite casually and in a manner which carried with it the impression that such noted folk as Mrs. Denton and her distinguished father, and Freddy Urb the court jester of the innermost holies of holies of Newport and Bar Harbor and Palm Beach, and Mrs. Gordon-Tracy, the famous beauty, were of the sort with whom customarily he associated. Plainly here was a gentleman who not only belonged to the ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... merely contains the words, "Here begynneth the boke of Keruynge;" and beneath them is—as in the second edition of 1513—a picture of two ladies and two gentlemen at dinner, with an attendant bringing a dish, two servants at a side table, and a jester. The colophon tells us that it was "Enprynted by wynkyn de worde at London in Flete strete at the sygne of the sonne. The yere of our lorde M.CCCCC.VIII;" beneath which is Wynkyn de Worde's device, ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... off in the dregs of the river than she had ever been in the dregs of New York. She shuddered. Then, as so often, the sense of the grotesque thrust in, as out of place as jester in cap and bells at a bier—and she smiled sardonically. "Why," thought she, "in being squeamish about Freddie I'm showing that I'm more respectable than the respectable women. There's hardly one of them that doesn't swallow worse doses with less excuse or no excuse ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... seems to be about is that the only possible object of reading any form of fiction is for pure amusement, to fill an idle hour and be forgotten and if these tales are not as amusing as some jester of to-day, then the idler says, Away with them as a failure! For such a person, who only looks to have the tedium of a vacuous mind relieved, these tales are not in the least intended. But the real and genuine charm of all fiction is that of enabling the reader to place himself ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie
... lord's jester) took upon himself to 15 marshal the guests. And wild work he made of it; good Days, bad Days, all were shuffled together. He had stuck the Twenty-first of June next to the Twenty-second of December, and the former looked like a maypole by the side of a marrowbone. Ash Wednesday got ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... was making ready to impale the tailor, the sultan of Casgar, wanting the company of his crooked jester, asked where he was; and one of his officers told him; "The hunch-back, Sir, whom you inquire after, got drunk last night, and contrary to his custom slipped out of the palace, and went strolling about the city, and this morning was found dead. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... to me one day at table,—I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them. Do you know they play the part in the household which the king's jester, who very often had a mighty long head under his cap and bells, used to play for a monarch? There 's no radical club like a nest of little folks in a nursery. Did you ever watch a baby's fingers? I have, often enough, though I never knew what ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to many walkers, which Punch, some years ago, touched upon satirically, but which seems to have survived the jester's ridicule. It is that custom of stopping friends in the street, to whom we have nothing whatever to communicate, but whom we embarrass for no other purpose than simply to show our friendship. Jones meets his friend Smith, whom he has ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... productions of Artemus Ward. The present generation vaguely remembers Artemus Ward as the man who was willing to send all his wife's relatives to the war and who, standing by the tomb of Shakespeare, thought it "a success." But no one who turns to the almost forgotten pages of that kindly jester can fail to be impressed by his sunny quality, by the atmosphere of fraternal affection which glorifies his queer spelling and his somewhat threadbare witticisms. Mark Twain, who is universally recognized by Europeans as a representative of typical American humor, had precisely ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... delivered from the command of Cortes and the dangers of the city of Mexico. Finding them in this mood, Narvaez ordered them to be plentifully supplied with wine, to make them more communicative. Cervantes the jester, who was one of these soldiers, under pretence of facetiousness, exposed to him all the discontents of our soldiers respecting the distribution of the treasure we had obtained, and informed him also of the bad state of the garrison in Villa Rica under Sandoval. The arrival of this new armament was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... off the heads of poor devils who may have killed a man and licenses creatures who despatch, medically speaking, a dozen young folks in a season. Morality is powerless against a dozen vices which destroy society and which nothing can punish.—Another cup!—Upon my word of honor! man is a jester dancing upon a precipice. They talk to us about the immorality of the Liaisons Dangereuses, and any other book you like with a vulgar reputation; but there exists a book, horrible, filthy, fearful, corrupting, which is always open and will never be shut, the great book of the ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... when you are king you must appoint me court jester. Will you, my good Lord? We two are good contrasts: You full of dignity upon a royal throne, a golden crown upon your head, the scepter in your hand, and I dressed in motley with cap and bells. Heigh ho! That will be jolly. And after all we are so ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... inclination or civility, while this merry companion is acting his part. It is a business he hath undertaken, and we are to suppose he is paid for his day's work. I only quarrel when in select and private meetings, where men of wit and learning are invited to pass an evening, this jester should be admitted to run over his circle of tricks, and make the whole company unfit for any other conversation, besides the indignity of confounding men's talents at ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... of a tumour in the back, no one dreaming of employing the lancet, which would probably have saved his life. It is said that one king suffered terribly from an abscess in the lip, till his physician called in a jester, whose pranks made the king laugh heartily, and so the abscess burst. Roman and Sabine priests might not be shaved with iron but only with bronze razors or shears; and whenever an iron graving-tool was brought ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Court) always found means to throw him out of favour again. The celebrated Archie Armstrong offered Sir Mungo, in his generosity, a skirt of his own fool's coat, proposing thereby to communicate to him the privileges and immunities of a professed jester—"For," said the man of motley, "Sir Mungo, as he goes on just now, gets no more for a good jest than just the king's ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... little hot and angry after riding,' the horse-dealer returned, with the leer of a privileged jester. 'Presently, he will see my horse's points more clearly. I will wait till he has finished his talk with the Padre. I will wait under ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... sensibility; which was as open to pleasure as to pain. This sensibility, if it somewhat impaired his vigor, led him into curious and delicate fancies, and taught him a liking for things of the highest relish, which a mere robust jester never tastes. ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... prevailed. At a table abreast of the King, Montpensier and Marshal Cosse were dicing and disputing, with now a yell of glee, and now an oath, that betrayed which way fortune inclined. At the back of the King's chair, Chicot, his gentleman-jester, hung over Charles's shoulder, now scanning his cards, and now making hideous faces that threw the on-lookers into fits of laughter. Farther up the Chamber, at the end of the alcove, Marshal Tavannes—our ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... carried to Massif, in the Passage des Princes. The editor of the Jeunes was seated in his office, which was decorated with etchings and beautiful bindings. He is well known by his magnificent black beard and his large bald head, upon which a wicked jester once advised him to paste his advertisements; he publishes the works of audacious authors and sensational books, and had the honor of sharing with Charles Bazile, the poet, an imprisonment at St.-Pelagie. He received this thin-faced ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... graceful dandy, king of fashion in his day, the count D'Orsay. It was at a breakfast at Tortoni's that the preliminaries were arranged for the famous duel wherein D'Orsay appeared as the champion of the Virgin Mary. Some irreverent jester having made some slighting remark respecting the Virgin, D'Orsay took the matter up and called the speaker to account. "For," said the count, "the Virgin is a woman, and as such ought not to be slandered ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... Clara!—better off in the dregs of the river than she had ever been in the dregs of New York. She shuddered. Then, as so often, the sense of the grotesque thrust in, as out of place as jester in cap and bells at a bier—and she smiled sardonically. "Why," thought she, "in being squeamish about Freddie I'm showing that I'm more respectable than the respectable women. There's hardly one of them that doesn't swallow worse doses with less excuse or no excuse ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... 'What an eternal jester is that Pomponius!' said one voice. 'He is going to receive absolution, and he journeys in his chariot of state, as if he were preparing to celebrate his triumph, instead of to confess ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... spare thee a long journey and much danger. Leave here thy rum and presents, and return to thy patrons, Alrichs and Beeckman, bearing our English gratitude, and thou shalt wear a beautiful hat, such as the King of England allows only his jester ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... it was over it was announced that Hal Macy had carried off the role of the poor, neglected son, which was in reality the male lead. The Crane was selected for the king, while freckle-faced Daniel Seabrooke was chosen for the jester, greatly to his delight and surprise. There was an emphatic round of applause when Professor Harmon announced that Constance Stevens had been selected to sing the Princess. Ellen Seymour captured the role of the queen, and to Mignon La Salle was allotted ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... longer need of a court jester," returned her companion, with sarcasm. "But never mind, Adrien will find out his mistake for himself one day. Certainly, I am not going to attempt to strip the mask off his friend's face. Give him rope enough, and ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... contemptuous of the common herd, seems rather a complimentary portrait of Jonson than a caricature. As to the personages actually ridiculed in "Every Man Out of His Humour," Carlo Buffone was formerly thought certainly to be Marston, as he was described as "a public scurrilous, and profane jester," and elsewhere as the grand scourge or second untruss [that is, satirist], of the time" (Joseph Hall being by his own boast the first, and Marston's work being entitled "The Scourge of Villainy"). Apparently we must ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... time every king kept a jester to make jokes and amuse him and his friends at their feasts, and the jester was a privileged person, who could say anything he liked. So now they told the jester of the King of France that he must tell the king the bad news, because ...
— Royal Children of English History • E. Nesbit
... of their admirals: the loss of the English was inconsiderable, compared to the greatness and importance of the victory.[*] None of Philip's courtiers, it is said, dared to inform him of the event; till his fool or jester gave him a hint, by which he discovered the loss that he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... during which Beatrice, although she knew be had so well approved his valor in the late war, said that she would eat all he had killed there; and observing the prince take delight in Benedick's conversation, she called him "the prince's jester." This sarcasm sank deeper into the mind of Benedick than all Beatrice had said before. The hint she gave him that he was a coward, by saying she would eat all he bad killed, he did not regard, knowing himself ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... love. Ah! if women only knew the cynical tone that such men, so humble, so fawning in their presence, take behind their backs! how they sneer at what they say they adore! Fresh, pure, gracious being, how the scoffing jester disrobes and analyzes her! but, even so, the more she loses veils, the more her ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... ill a jester," said Lawless, "ye shall have your word for me. 'Duckworth and Shelton' is the word; and here, to the illustration, is Shelton on my shoulders, and to Duckworth do I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "A jester might say this is just like Paradise. You are Eve, and I am the old Other One come to tempt you in the disguise of an inferior animal. I used to be quite up in that scene of Milton's when I was ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... may-pole carried by a man dressed as a jester, and boys and girls in early English peasant costumes held the ends of the long fluttering ribbons, laughing ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... humorist, wag, wit, reparteeist^, epigrammatist, punster; bel esprit, life of the party; wit-snapper, wit-cracker, wit- worm; joker, jester, Joe Miller^, drole de corps^, gaillard^, spark; bon diable [Fr.]; practical joker. buffoon, farceur [Fr.], merry-andrew, mime, tumbler, acrobat, mountebank, charlatan, posturemaster^, harlequin, punch, pulcinella^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of every age and nation, silly thoughts and wise thoughts, thoughts of people, of things, and of nothing, good thoughts, impish thoughts, and large, gracious thoughts. There they went swinging hand-in-hand in corkscrew fashion. An antic jester in green and gold led the dance. The guests followed no order or precedent. No two thoughts were related to each other even by the fortieth cousinship. There was not so much as an international alliance between them. Each thought behaved ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... a jester did adore, Who early died and in the church-yard sleeps. Once in a while she reads his best jokes o'er And sits her down and madly, ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... Perhaps a warrior, and those arms have borne The foremost shield, and dealt the deadliest blow That drew the life-blood of a warring foe! Perhaps thou wor'st the courtier's gilded thrall,— Some glittering court's gay, proud papilio! Perchance a clown, the jester of some hall, The slave of one man, and the fool ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... visited with some misgivings, as many expected to find there the mate of the dead cayman, but nature is ever a jester, and the nets came up full at each haul. Aunt Isabel superintended the sorting of the fish and ordered that some be left in the trap for decoys. "It's not lucky to empty the corral completely," ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... shifted for a monologue of three lines or a dialogue of six; tragic and comic were interwoven; the stage was thronged with a motley variety of figures, humors, and conditions—knights, citizens, soldiers, horse-boys, peasants; there was a court-jester; songs and lyric passages were interspersed; there were puns, broad jokes, rant, Elizabethan metaphors, and swollen trunk-hose hyperboles, with innumerable Shakesperian reminiscences in detail. But the advice of Herder, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... The Dickens scenes were repeated for a younger club, just trying its dramatic wings in charades, and when May-time came these younger girls of twelve to fifteen gave a very successful representation of an old English May-day with Robin Hood and his merry band, a Jester, a Dragon, a Hobby-horse and Jack in the Green, Maid Marian and the Lord and Lady of the ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... fellow in his time, and notable jester; he loved to drink neat, as much as any man that then was in the world, and would willingly eat salt meat. To this intent he was ordinarily well furnished with gammons of bacon, both of Westphalia, Mayence and Bayonne, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... of the beginnings of that beastly development. Over the great fireplace, after the great oak panels had been torn down, I found that there was let into the masonry a scrollwork of stone, with on it an old inscription, in ancient Celtic, that here in this room was burned Dian Tiansay, Jester of King Alzof, who made the Song of Foolishness upon King Ernore ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... Literature.—In Two Volumes, Koempe Viser; Songs about Giants and Heroes. With Romantic and Historical Ballads, Translated from the Ancient Danish. With an Introduction and Copious Notes.—In One Volume, The Turkish Jester; or, The Pleasantries of Cogia Nasr Eddin Efendi. Translated from the Turkish. With an Introduction.—In Two Volumes, Penquite and Pentyre; or, The Head of the Forest and the Headland. A Book on Cornwall.—In One Volume, ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... the guests sprang up in anger and drew their swords to slay the man who dared speak thus to the King, but the angel answered calmly: "Thou art not the King, but henceforth thou shalt be the king's jester and wear cap and bells and motley. As counselor thou shalt lead an ape, and thou shalt obey my servants and wait ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... qualification for a patron saint is antiquity. As poppa says, there may be elderly gentlemen in Heidelberg now whose grandfathers have warned them against the personal habits of Perkeo from actual observation. Also we know that he was a court jester, and the pages of the Calendar, for some reason, are closed to persons in that walk of life. Judging by the evidences of his popularity that survive on all sides, Mr. Malt declared that he was probably worth more to the ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... anecdote, typically oriental, which contains a bit of true philosophy. It seems that the hero, Nass-ed-Din Hodja, was a Turkish person who became chief jester to the terrible Tamerlane during his invasion of Asia Minor. He was also the hero, real or imaginary, of many other stories which originated during the close of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries. His tomb is still shown at ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... he could lay hands. The result was a naval victory at Sluys, in which well-nigh the whole French fleet was absolutely destroyed. It was by the English archers that the day was won. So complete was the victory that no one dared to tell the ill news to Philip, till his jester called out to him, "What cowards those English are!" "Because," he explained, "they did not dare to leap into the sea as ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... Crow smelleth powder, 'tis said, Like a soldier escheweth the taste of cold lead; No jester, or mime, hath more marvellous wit, For, wherever he lighteth, he maketh a hit! Caw! Caw! the Carrion Crow! Dig! Dig! in ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... wonder of the sweet-smelling chairs, the birds, and the elegant dogs. Richest of treats, a monkey was introduced to me. 'It 's your papa's whim,' Mrs. Waddy said, resignedly; 'he says he must have his jester. Indeed it is no joke ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... courtiers following SHUMAKIM, a hump-backed jester, in blue, green and red, a wreath of poppies around his neck and a flagon in his hand. He walks unsteadily, and stutters in ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... that bears for winding-sheet The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew, Between the mourners at his head and feet, Say, scurrile jester, is ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... which was exercised with equal promptitude upon friends and foes, he alternately roused the terror and the laughter of his audiences. At the bar and in the Irish House of Commons he was alike notorious as jester and bully; but he was a courageous bully, and to the last was always as ready to fight with bullets as with epigrams, and though his humor was especially suited to the taste and passions of the rabble, it sometimes convulsed with merriment those who were shocked by ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... near enough to watch his lips and his smile and his merry eyes, I was happy. That any one could talk so fast, and in English, was marvel enough, but that this prodigy should belong to our establishment was a fact to thrill me. I had never seen anything like Mr. Wilner, except a wedding jester; but then he spoke common Yiddish. So proud was I of the talent and good taste displayed at our stand that if my father beckoned to me in the crowd and sent me on an errand, I hoped the people noticed that I, too, was connected with ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... will go to bed well pleased. And there isn't a single police agent there, I'm sure. Ah! to be loved, to be loved!" Plainly enough his distress of spirit was coming back, and so, turning towards the gallery again, he tried to play the jester. "Attention, my dear Abbe, we mustn't miss their Majesties' entry. That will be the finest part ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Tieng-tsong-tai-oang died of a tumour in the back, no one dreaming of employing the lancet, which would probably have saved his life. It is said that one king suffered terribly from an abscess in the lip, till his physician called in a jester, whose pranks made the king laugh heartily, and so the abscess burst. Roman and Sabine priests might not be shaved with iron but only with bronze razors or shears; and whenever an iron graving-tool was brought into the sacred grove of the Arval Brothers ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the girl were a penknife or a marble that had rolled from Bates's pocket, and the latter, irritated by an inward fear, grew to hate the jester. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... a royal jester beset with great dangers, and the king having once gotten it into his royal head that I was a wizard, it was not long before I again fell into trouble, from which my wit did not a second time in a like ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... foul songs and to dance foul dances. I have grinned and whistled through evil days and ways. My wit was gray with iniquities when Hildebrand, the King's minion, saw me one day at a fair in Naples and picked me out for jester to Prince Robert." ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... length, her choice of a companion for life. It is repeatedly argued, by critics of any new idea, that the eugenist, in his concern for the race, is blind to the natural interests and needs of the individual; that "we are all to be married to each other by the police," as an irresponsible jester has declared; that the sanctities of love are to be profaned or its imperatives defied. Even serious and responsible persons assume that there is here a necessary antagonism between the interests of the race and those of the individual,—that ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... of a pipe now very mournful and sweet, anon breaking into a merry lilt full of rippling trills and soft, bubbling notes most pleasant to be heard. Wherefore he went aside and thus, led by the music, beheld a jester in his motley lying a-sprawl beneath a tree. A long-legged knave was he, pinched and something doleful of visage yet with quick bright eyes that laughed 'neath sombre brows, and a wide, up-curving mouth; upon his escalloped cape and flaunting cock's-comb were many little bells that rang a silvery ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... pleasantly lambent, though maddish, as Friedrich perceived. Thus had La Mettrie found a Goshen;—and stood in considerable favor, at Court and in Berlin Society in the years now current. According to Nicolai, Friedrich never esteemed La Mettrie, which is easy to believe, but found him a jester and ingenious madcap, out of whom a great deal of merriment could be had, over wine or the like. To judge by Nicolai's authentic specimen, their Colloquies ran sometimes pretty deep into the cynical, under showers of wildfire playing about; and the high-jinks ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... backward and forward without assistance. It was painful in the extreme to see the man who was undergoing tortures behind the curtain step lightly before the audience amid a burst of merriment, and for more than an hour sustain the part of jester, tossing his cap and jingling his bells, a painted death's head, for he had to rouge his face to ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... "walk up," let us march in the train of the great Mime, until he takes his ease in his inn,—the Black Jack aforesaid,—and laugh at his jibes and flashes of merriment, before the Mad Wag shall be silenced by the great killjoy, Death, and the jester's boon companions shall lay him in the graveyard in Portugal Fields, placing over him a friendly ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... corpse, that bears for winding sheet The Stars and Stripes, he lived to rear anew, Between the mourners at his head and feet, Say, scurrile-jester, is ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... the religion of the people. The true religion is but the religion of the prince; the true God is the God whom the prince wishes them to worship; the will of the priests who govern the prince, always becomes the will of God. A jester once said, with reason, that "the true faith is always the one which has on its side ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... King's, and was tearing the bed to pieces with his sword, when Margaret Bisset, one of the Queen's ladies, who was sitting up reading a book of devotions, heard the noise; roused the guard, and he was secured. There, too, was the half-witted jester, who, we are sorry to say, was a chaplain, with whom the King and his brother Aymer were seen playing like boys, pelting each other with apples and ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... about Venus's turtle and the London Tavern before—you begin to fail, my poor Wagg. If you don't mind I shall be obliged to have a new Jester," Lord Steyne said, laying down his glass. "Go on, Wenham, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... interrogation, propounded in a jeering tone, the Puritan deigned no reply; but an answer was given for him by Archee, the court jester, who had managed in the confusion to creep up to ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... twanged her guitar and sang little songs—French and English, funny and sentimental—he became, as he had so often become in other scenes, the Rigoletto of the company; and Riffrath was a kingdom in which he might be court jester in ordinary if he chose, whenever he elected to honor it with his ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... (as my lord's jester) took upon himself to marshal the guests. And wild work he made of it; good Days, bad Days, all were shuffled together. He had stuck the Twenty-first of June next to the Twenty-second of December, and the former looked ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... Vidushaka, we find an instance of our author's masterly skill in giving life to the dry bones of a rhetorical definition. The Vidushaka is a stock character who has something in common with a jester; and in Maitreya the essential traits of the character—eagerness for good food and other creature comforts, and blundering devotion to his friend—are retained, to be sure, but clarified and elevated by his quaint humor and his readiness to follow ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... called for so many ingredients, that the doctor had nearly expired when the list was presented to him. In addition to all these, arrived the king's band of singers and musicians, and the Luti Bashi (jester in chief) accompanied by twenty lutis, each with a drum hanging over ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... grey-haired. She wears gold spectacles, which stand out oddly against the thin whiteness of her face; she is still a handsome, distinguished woman, who can have, when she chooses, a most gracious manner. As I, worldling and jester though I am, for some mysterious reason have found favour in the lady's eyes, she manifests this graciousness whenever we foregather. Ergo, I like Lady Kynnersley, and would put myself to much inconvenience in order ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... will be sold in sets, carefully arranged on all self-respecting bookshelves, pointed to with pride as a proof of culture, and never read. They will perhaps one day be the Rogers's statuettes of literature. But that day is evidently far off. I do not think that any jester of the older day—the day of Touchstone or of Rigoletto, with a rooted sorrow in his heart, could have been more pessimistic and more hopeless than Mark Twain. To change the words of Autolycus—"For the life to come, I jest out the thought ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... from their seats, and drew their swords. They would have killed the crazy man who insulted their king; but he raised his hand and stopped them, and with his eyes looking into Robert's eyes he said, "Not the king; you shall be the king's jester! You shall wear the cap and bells, and make laughter for my court. You shall be the servant of the servants, and your companion shall be the ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... these are old terms signifying a fool or idiot. Patch was the favourite jester of Henry the Eighth, whose name was ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... supply of presents down the chimney that night, which caused great merriment next day. For ladies got smoking caps, and cigar-cases; while gentlemen received workboxes, thimbles, and tatting-needles. Peter got a jester's cap and bells, which he vowed was a dunce's cap intended for Rose, to that young lady's great indignation. Tom had a primer, and a present for a good boy, and May received a plain gold ring at which they all laughed very much, to May's excessive ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... England insists on treating her criminals like this, she doesn't deserve to have any." Similarly, if the public insists on bringing its woes to its colyumists, it doesn't deserve to have any colyumists. Then the battered jester turns again to his machine and ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... slowly, "it's—it's just as though some cosmic jester, all-powerful, had scooped up the fragments of a ruined city and tossed them pell-mell into the core of the Adirondacks! ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... is because they love their country; if I abhor ... it is because I know there is but one man among them who is not laughing at the enormous folly and credulity of the country, and that he is an ignorant and mischievous bigot. As for the light and frivolous jester, of whom it is your misfortune to think so highly, learn, my dear Abraham, that this political Killigrew, just before the breaking-up of the last administration, was in actual treaty with them for a place; and if they had survived twenty-four hours ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... and then throughout the middle age records, to Umbrellas; but the extreme paucity of such allusions goes to show that they were not in common use. In an old romance, "The Blonde of Oxford," a jester makes fun of a nobleman for being out in the rain without his cloak. "Were I a rich man," says he, "I would bear my house about with me." By this very valiant joke he meant, as he afterwards explained, that the nobleman should wear a cloak, not ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... prose of Milton, only to run, the next moment, to the Silenian ribaldry of Tom Brown the younger,—and so keeping up a Saturnalia, in which goat-footed sylvans mix with the maidens of Diana, and the party-colored jester shakes his truncheon in the face of Plato. Only in this wild and promiscuous license can we taste the genuine joys ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... thickets and glens, who have abated the cruelty of priests, the pride of nobles, the divinity of kings in former times: to whom we owe it, that we no longer wear round our necks the collar of Gurth the swineherd, and of Wamba the jester; that the castles of great lords are no longer the dens of banditti, whence they issue with fire and sword to lay waste the land; that we no longer expire in loathsome dungeons without knowing the cause, or have our right hands struck off for raising them in self-defence against wanton ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... kept them there, and would not have the pond dragged; but would go thither and gloat upon them for half a summer's day. The mansion was full of gay folks—his old town companions invited to visit him, and behold his greatness (as he had often imagined they should be): Tub Ryll was his jester now, and Parson Whymper his "chaplain." They were all playing pool as usual, and he was just about to make an easy hazard, when somebody jogged his elbow. It was the ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... separated, were represented as meeting at every crossroad or entering the church door side by side. So the most solemn Miracles were scandalized by humorous Interludes, and into the most tragic of Shakespeare's scenes entered the fool and the jester. A Greek playwright might object to brutalizing scenes before a cultured audience, but the crowds who came to an Elizabethan play were of a temper to enjoy a Mohawk scalp dance. They were accustomed to violent scenes and sensations; they had witnessed ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... of those women who are never swayed by any passion stronger than worldly ambition, never burned by any fires other than those of jealousy or anger. Her meagre nature was truly depicted in her meagre face. Nature is ofttimes a great lair and a cruel jester, giving to the cold and vapid woman the face and form of a sensuous siren, and concealing a heart of volcanic fires, or the soul of a Phryne, under the exterior of a spinster. But the old dame had been wholly frank in forming Miss Lawrence. The thin, flat ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... again the big conclusive phrase that merges into more pranks of the jaunty tune in the biggest revel of all, so that we suspect the jolly jester is the real hero and the majestic figures are, after all, mere background. And yet here follows the most tenderly moving verse, all unexpected, of the ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... Levant to buy horses, for which he gave him ten thousand ducats, and the fool marked this as a piece of folly. Some time afterwards the king asked for the book to look over it, was surprised to find his own name, and asked why it was there. "Because," said the jester, "you have entrusted your money to one you are never likely to see again." "But if he does come again," demanded the king, "and brings me the horses, what folly have I committed?" "Well, if he does return," replied the fool, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... dressed partly in Spanish and partly in English costume. Thus, the huge sleeves were Spanish, but the laced stomacher English. Hobby-horse represented the king and all the knightly order; Maid Marian, the queen; the friar, the clergy generally; the fool, the court jester. The other characters represented a franklin or private gentleman, a churl or farmer, and the lower grades were represented by a clown. The Spanish costume is to show the origin ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... of myrtle. By a sun-dial stood a little man, robust, though aged, rather stout, and of a very cheerful countenance; his attire plain and simple, a pelisse of dark silk, and a turban white as his snowy beard; he was in merry conversation with his companion, who turned out to be his jester. In the background, against the myrtle wall, stood three or four courtiers in rich dresses—courtiers, for the little old man was their princely master—the great ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... among the nations. But that he is so void of the comic faculty as certain potent authorities allege, we persistently doubt. Mr Macaulay affirms that Southey may be always read with pleasure, except when he tries to be droll; that a more insufferable jester never existed; and that, often as he attempts to be humorous, he in no single occasion has succeeded further than to be quaintly and flippantly dull. Another reviewer warned the author of the Doctor, that there is no greater mistake than that which a grave person falls into, when ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... tired of this Merry Andrew—they "sent him elsewhere to talk other folks to death"—to the State House, where he served several terms creditably, but was mainly the fund of jollity to the lobby and the chartered jester of ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... enough, he combined this taste with an intense fondness for pure literature and for lyrical poetry. Rabelais is among his masters, and so is Aretino, "one of the wittiest knaves that ever God made." Tarleton the jester is among his friends, and so is Kemp, the Dogberry of Shakespeare's "Much Ado," the Peter of "Romeo and Juliet," the famous dancer who performed a morris dance from London to Norwich. And at the same time he bestows with unbounded enthusiasm heartfelt praises upon Spenser, "heavenly Spenser"; ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... is true that no literary fashion is more subject to change than the fashion of a jest, and that jokes that make one generation laugh seem insipid to the next. But there is something perennial in the fun of Rabelais, whom Bacon called "the great jester of France," and though the puns of Shakespeare's clowns are detestable the clowns themselves have not ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... inhabitants of those sublime regions will like your company no better than mine. Indeed, how Momus himself could get a seat at that table I can't well comprehend. It has been usual, I confess, in some of our Courts upon earth, to have a privileged jester, called the king's fool. But in the Court of Heaven one should not have supposed such an officer as Jupiter's fool. Your allegorical theology in ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... nothing but ladies?" says Feste the Jester to poor Malvolio. He might have said the same to Horace; for of the Odes in the first three Books one third part is addressed to or concerned with women. How many of the pretty female names which musicalize his love songs, in syllables that breathe ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... of the abuses which Luther later attacked escaped Erasmus' satirical pen. The book is a mixture of the lightest humor and the bitterest earnestness. As one turns its pages one is sometimes tempted to think Luther half right when he declared Erasmus "a regular jester who makes sport of everything, even of religion and Christ himself." Yet there was in this humorist a deep seriousness that cannot be ignored. Erasmus was really directing his extraordinary industry, knowledge, and insight, not toward ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... not to appear touched with the sarcasm of a jester, they subject themselves to his power, and the wise man will have his folly anatomised, that is dissected and laid open by the squandring glances or ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... bauble and the lure, Or gird at those who your wild hopes would chasten, Or guide you on a pathway more secure! And yet beware! No oriflamme of battle Is that false radiance round yon impish brow. The jester's bladder-bauble, with its rattle Of prisoned peas, is not the tow-row-row Of Labour's true reveille. Bonnet Phrygian, Cap of sham Liberty, the spectre wears; But he will plunge to depths of darkness Stygian Whom anti-civic Violence ensnares. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... very different side to Stevenson which struck others more than it struck myself, namely, that of the freakish or elvish, irresponsible madcap or jester which sometimes appeared in him. It is true that his demoniac quickness of wit and intelligence suggested occasionally a "spirit of air and fire" rather than one of earth; that he was abundantly given to all kinds of quirk and laughter; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... room, lest the nobility that went to see him dine should encumber the table, and he alone set on and took off the dishes, for the pages neither came near nor spoke a word. Strict silence was observed, none daring to speak unless it was some jester, or the person of whom he asked a question. The sewer was always upon his knees and barefooted, attending him without lifting up his eyes. No man with shoes on was to come into the room upon pain of death. The sewer also gave him drink in a cup of several shapes, sometimes of gold, and sometimes ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... the gay uniform of the Lord High Commissioner, the gold lace of his dragoon officers, and the glitter of his pages in silver and scarlet. 'We are two of the humblest servants of Mother Church,' said the Prior and his companion to Wamba, the jester of Rotherwood. 'Two of the humblest servants of Mother Church!' repeated Wamba; 'I should rather like to see her seneschals, her chief butlers, and her ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... of those two medieval institutions which we have now lost—I suppose irrevocably—the whipping boy and the court jester. What a pity that they cannot be revived! The whipping boy, a device to put princes on their honor to be neither negligent nor wanton in the fulfilment of their duties; and the jester to break us of our too self-conscious airs and exhibit to us our follies. See what we have ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... words the strange king smiled sadly, and replied: "I am the king, and thou shalt be my servant. Yes, thou shalt be the servant of all my servants, for thou shalt be court jester, and wear the cap and bells, and have for your companion the ...
— A Child's Story Garden • Compiled by Elizabeth Heber
... dark distress, left him all alone? Then suddenly his door opened, and there came in a man in disguise, and, as he threw back his cloak, the Kaiser recognized in him his faithful Conrad von der Rosen, the court jester. This man brought him comfort and counsel, and he was ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... minutes before the hour a cock gives warning of the time by crowing and flapping its carved wings. Then out comes a procession of bears that march solemnly round a bearded Father Time, whereupon the cock crows again, and a jester, hammer in hand, strikes a bell. At the sound the bearded old man raises his sceptre, opens his mouth, and turns an hourglass. And at each stroke of the bell a bear nods his head. All this done, the cock crows again and ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... or professional jester, was not only a fool, however. His value was trebled in the eyes of the king, by the fact of his being also a dwarf and a cripple. Dwarfs were as common at court, in those days, as fools; and many monarchs would have found it difficult to get through their days (days are rather longer at ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... that sardonic jester who loves best to thwart the dearest desires of men and warp the destiny of nations, became piqued at the peace and the plenty in the land which lay around the bay. Chance, knowing well how best and quickest to let savagery loose upon the land, plucked a ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... steady. So in the refectory, when they sat down for a meal, there was an endless fire of raillery, and the blue-eyed boy with the blond hair used to crow like Peter Pan and speak a wonderful mixture of French and English, and play the jester gallantly. There would be processions of plate-bearers to the kitchen next door, where a splendid Englishwoman—one of those fine square-faced, brown-eyed, cheerful souls—had been toiling all day in the ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... carmen, the mingled sounds which arose from the multitude were those of light-hearted mirth and tiptoe jollity. The musicians preluded on their instruments—the minstrels hummed their songs—the licensed jester whooped betwixt mirth and madness, as he brandished his bauble—the morrice-dancers jangled their bells—the rustics hallooed and whistled-men laughed loud, and maidens giggled shrill; while many a broad jest flew like a shuttlecock ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... Tales? Those are not for children: Chaucer was a jester. You had better take my book. It has beautiful pictures." The young Percy took the little breviary, and, going down the path as though they sought the shade, they both quietly disappeared ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... but most amusing jester (Mr. Jerdan) mainly contributed, was checked only by the announcement of supper; and as the guests descended the stairs from the gallery, or assembled on the lobby, they beheld their cheer borne in procession from ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... merely a glance, we fancy we comprehend them. But the more we think, the more we reflect, the more the difficulty opens on us of doing full justice to the mind of Hood. We soon discover that we are dealing, not with a mere punster or jester, not with a mere master of grimace or manufacturer of broad grins, not with an eccentric oddity in prose or verse, not with a merry-andrew who tickles to senseless laughter, not with a spasmodic melodramatist who writhes in fictitious pain, but that we are ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... and took it out of this singular kettle in some way unknown to his guests. He carefully gave each their portion to eat, but made so many odd movements that the Otter could not refrain from laughing, for he is the only one who is spoken of as a jester. The Manito looked at him with a terrible look, and then made a spring at him, and got on him to smother him, for that was his mode of killing animals. But the Otter, when he felt him on his neck, slipped his head back and made for the door, which he passed in safety; but went out with the curse ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... women took their secret troubles to her. For this unwieldy jester, with the jolly red face and rough tongue, could touch the heart with a word, when she was in the humour. Then she spoke so wisely and kindly that the tears gathered in stubborn eyes, and the poor fools went ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... of story-tellers and buffoons. The name is derived from the Sanskrit Bhanda, a jester, and the caste are also known as Naqqal or actor. Only a trifling number of Bhands are shown by the census as belonging to the Central Provinces. Mr. Crooke remarks: "The Bhand is sometimes employed in the courts of Rajas and native gentlemen of rank, where he amuses the company at entertainments ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... dope most of last night from some merry little jester working a toy, home-made. He just kept repeating the same thing—something about 'McCarthy, at six o'clock you shall have a sign given unto you. It works,' over and over all night. Some new advertising dodge, I reckon. Didn't know but you were the McCarthy and were ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... manhood is preferable to senile decrepitude, that Pheidias surpasses the sculptors of Antinous, that one Madonna of Gian Bellini is worth all the pictures of the younger Palma, and that Dossi's portrait of the Ferrarese jester is better worth having than the whole of Annibale Caracci's Galleria Farnesina.[235] It will even lead us to select for models those works which bear the mark of adolescence or vigorous maturity, as supplying more fruitful sources for our ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... killed. This interpretation was probably the result of a confusion with the old legend of the fight between Horus and Set, the rulers of the two kingdoms of Egypt. The possibility also suggests itself that a pun made by some priestly jester may have been the real factor that led to this mingling of two originally separate stories. In the "Destruction of Mankind" the story runs, according to Budge,[195] that Re, referring to his enemies, said: ma-ten set uar er set, "Behold ye them ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... had been living with us had married,—Nellie, to A. C. Jester, a cattle man, and May, to Ed. Bradford, a railroad engineer—and consequently left us; and my wife had been wishing for a long time to visit her parents in St. Louis. Taking these and other things into consideration I finally resolved ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... to be tied firmly and well, for some jester might try to pull away that of Pierre, and if his face were seen, it would be death—a slaughter without defense, for he had not been able to conceal his big Colt in these tight-fitting clothes. Even as it was, there was peril from the moment that the lights within should shine ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... a dollar," she said, "but it is a jester's dollar, the fee of a clown. Don't you see, Martin, the whole thing is lowering. I want the man I love and honor to be something finer and higher than a ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... the buffalo on our hunt was accredited to sister May, to me the episode proved of much more moment. In the spring of 1871 I was married to Mr. Jester, the bachelor ranchman at whose place we had tarried on our hurried return to the fort. His house had a rough exterior, but was substantial and commodious, and before I entered it, a bride, it was refitted in a style almost luxurious. I returned to Leavenworth to prepare for the wedding, which ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... Prince, when you are king you must appoint me court jester. Will you, my good Lord? We two are good contrasts: You full of dignity upon a royal throne, a golden crown upon your head, the scepter in your hand, and I dressed in motley with cap and bells. Heigh ho! That will be jolly. And after all we ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... was a little wit in that, I must confesse, but she put him downe far, and aunswered him with a question, and that was whether he wood seeme a lover, or a jester? if a lover, a must tell her far more lykelier then those, or else she was far from believing them; if a Jester, she cood have much more ridiculous jests then his of twenty fooles, that followed the Court; and told him she had as lieve be courted with a brush faggot as with ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various
... as the man who was willing to send all his wife's relatives to the war and who, standing by the tomb of Shakespeare, thought it "a success." But no one who turns to the almost forgotten pages of that kindly jester can fail to be impressed by his sunny quality, by the atmosphere of fraternal affection which glorifies his queer spelling and his somewhat threadbare witticisms. Mark Twain, who is universally recognized by Europeans ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... gluttony, who, lacking the means to support the expenditure which his gluttony demanded, and being, for the rest, well-mannered and well furnished with excellent and merry jests, did, without turning exactly court jester, cultivate a somewhat biting wit, and loved to frequent the houses of the rich, and such as kept good tables; whither, bidden or unbidden, he not seldom resorted for breakfast or supper. There was also in those days at Florence one that was called ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Court of Wine." He represents King Wine as leading a triumphal march enthroned on a wine-press, wreathed with vine leaves and drawn with grape vines by jolly vintagers of every age and sex. Behind follow as chamberlains a band of coopers, a jester dancing on a cask, and a troop of gay youths full of all "quips and cranks and youthful wiles." Then come, represented by most happily conceived figures, the German rivers on whose shores are the world-famous vineyards ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... at once, casting aside with a violent effort the seriousness into which he had involuntarily fallen, Jaekel plunged again into his mad buffoonery, and went on in his harsh jester tones, "Don't be afraid, beautiful lady, Nose Star will not harm you. He is only dangerous to old Schnapper-Elle. She has fallen in love with his nose—which, faith! deserves it. Yea, for it is as ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... East, and Mandeville's Travels, were translated from the Latin. Kabatnik, J. Lobkowicz, and Bakalarz, wrote descriptions of Palestine between 1490 and 1500; the two first in books of travels. Mezyhor wrote a journal of the travels of Lew of Rozhmital, whom he accompanied as jester through Europe and a part of Asia. Collections of statutes, of the decrees of diets, of judicial decisions, and of other documents, were made by patriotic and sometimes eminent men; and those merely extant in Latin were carefully translated into Bohemian.[25] Thus they ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... and offensive. Those who wished to go to her house were forced to put up with Ferdishenko. Possibly the latter was not mistaken in imagining that he was received simply in order to annoy Totski, who disliked him extremely. Gania also was often made the butt of the jester's sarcasms, who used this method of keeping in ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... a country we are invading, and to locate the places where we are liable to meet with resistance. We will stop a moment now and then to shudder at Caliban, to admire Prospero, to love the sweet Miranda or to laugh at the nonsense of the jester and the drunken butler, but we will hasten on to the end nevertheless, knowing that we will become better acquainted with the people at ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... when the jester Asked the monarch how he was, And the landlady addrest her Guests as 'gossip' or as 'coz'; When the Templar said, "Gramercy," Or, "'Twas shrewdly thrust, i' fegs," To Sir Halbert or Sir Percy As they knocked him ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... too narrowly into the mouth of a Joe-Millerism. But Mr. Gillman, writing the life of a philosopher, and no jest-book, is under a different law of decorum. That retort, however, which silences the jester, it may seem, must be a good one. And we are desired to believe that, in this case, the baffled assailant rode off in a spirit of benign candor, saying aloud to himself, like the excellent philosopher that he evidently was, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... other friends, how strange and unnatural they seemed. Their most intimate friends would scarcely have recognized them. Margaret was a fat, jolly Falstaff, stuffed out to immense proportions. Edith was entirely disguised as a jester and enjoyed her own quips immensely when she tapped a visitor on the shoulder with her bauble and said, "Good morrow, fair maid, ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... Greeks, on the contrary, whose religion was an apotheosis of the earth, framed upwards and only by fiction of fancy handed downwards, derived all their theology from the poets. Prophecy and taste were combined in Homer,—Isaiah and the king's jester in Pindar. The care of the highest, not less than the lowest departments of thought, fell upon the creative author, and a happy suggestion became a new article in the Hellenic creed. His composition thus ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... listless gait, like a weary workman, turning his face, as smooth as an apple, with its ball-like nose, from side to side; and when he entered the dining-room, he cast a glance round at the furniture and fixed his eyes on a small picture of Rigoletto, a hunchbacked jester, and ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... "Profane jester! Would'st thou insult me with thy torn-foolery? Begone—all of ye! tramp! pack! I say: away with ye!" and into the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... Canute or Knute, with whom this bird was a special favourite. To come to more modern times, and not pausing at Ben Johnson's 'chaucerisms', Bishop Hall's 'scoganisms', from Scogan, Edward the Fourth's jester, or his 'aretinisms', from an infamous writer, 'a poisonous Italian ribald' as Gabriel Harvey calls him, named Aretine; these being probably not intended even by their authors to endure; a Roman cobbler named Pasquin has given us the ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... cock and bells, with which he dances, making a jingling noise. A Zany is not an idiot, but often a funny clever fellow, paid to make people laugh. We all like a good laugh sometimes. Many years ago kings used to keep jesters to amuse the company; King Henry the Eighth had a clever jester, called Will Somers, whose portrait was painted by a great artist named Holbein, which is now in the palace at Hampton Court, and may be seen ...
— The Royal Picture Alphabet • Luke Limner
... prison cells and the torture chamber. Oh, a very delicate wit! I have tried it on many a prisoner, and there have been some who smiled. Now it is not easy to make a prisoner smile. And it should not be difficult to be a good jester, seeing that ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... really deserve thanks?' asked De Stancy. 'I wish I deserved a reward; but I must bear in mind the fable of the priest and the jester.' ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Aristippus and Epicurus bore the palm, in virtue of their kindliness, sociability, and good-fellowship. Aesop the Phrygian was there, and held the office of jester. Diogenes of Sinope was much changed; he had married Lais the courtesan, and often in his cups would oblige the company with a dance, or other mad pranks. The Stoics were not represented at all; they were supposed to be still climbing the steep hill of Virtue; and ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... feather gathered for the purpose on the golf links ashore. He was thin, a grey-haired, silent man. His face, in repose, was that of a deliberate thinker whose thoughts had not led him to an entirely happy goal. Yet his smile when amused had a quality of gratitude to the jester, not altogether without pathos. He had a slightly cynical demeanour, a bitter tongue, and a curiously sympathetic, almost tender manner with the sick. He was professedly a fierce woman-hater, and when ashore passed children quickly with ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... the person be an extraordinary man, and, by a civil waiting, upon him at another man's invitation, you design to begin an acquaintance with him. And those friends you should chiefly go to as shadows, who would come to you again in the same quality. To Philip the jester, indeed, he seemed more ridiculous that came to a feast of his own accord than he that was invited; but to well-bred and civil friends it is more obliging for men of the same temper to come at the nick of time with other friends, when uninvited ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... into tragedy. It will bring Romeo face to face with the apothecary, Macbeth with the witches, Hamlet with the grave-diggers. Sometimes it may, without discord, as in the scene between King Lear and his jester, mingle its shrill voice with the most sublime, the most dismal, the dreamiest music ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
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